Math is a Tool of Racist Oppression!

Bob,

Those idiots will only make it more difficult for people. It's amazing they can't see the importantance of math skills.

The main problem as I see it is that "education majors" set policy for teaching math, rather than math majors.

"Educators" are constantly trying to reinvent the wheel with the end result being a consistent lowering of standards and total confusion among the students as to methodology.

Math is a sore subject with me. I was caught in the first group of "experimentation", which was put into effect when I began fourth grade.

As a result, I've met very few people in my age group who have any understanding of math due to someone's "better idea" that did not work. I spent the majority of my youth crippled in this area due to that "experimental" teaching method.

By the time the "educators" determined this and switched it out for yet another method that didn't work -- we were so lost the school system just pushed us along to make room for those behind us.

I suffered with this ignorance until my son was born. I brought him home from the hospital and remember telling my husband that I was finished with being math ignorant. It occurred to me that it would be far too easy for a child to point out that a parent had successfully graduated college avoiding math altogether. I didn't want to give my children that excuse, because even if true, it was limiting in terms of profession choices.

I signed up for math classes at night school a few times a week, leaving my family to babysit. The class was taught by a Chicago cop who did this part time for fun. And he taught it the old fashioned way with no tricky "education" theories. I finally learned math and I'm actually proficient.

I can't tell you how many people my age have told me that they envied me because I had the courage to go back and fix the problem, while they were still hiding the fact that they knew absolutely no math.

So all this poor performance can be attributed to these idiotic "education theories". The problem is that the "educators" shrug their shoulders and move on to some other crazy idea. But the students who learned nothing because of their "theories" go through life severely handicapped.

The answer is fairly simple. Stop "education theories" and just teach math the old fashioned way. Don't advance a person to a new concept until they've mastered the previous one. School systems have this crazy timetable in their heads and push everyone along whether they know it or not. Children end up feeling stupid, get discouraged, and give up trying. If kids have to be in different math classes for their ages , so what! Better than giving out diplomas that are just a piece of paper that means nothing.

But that would require common sense, which I have never seen an "education major" exhibit.

Sorry for the rant, but as I said lack of math skills for most of my life was a real issue with me. And I made sure it never happened to my children.

--Debutante

Hi Fred:

Personally, I think it's dangerous to allow entire generations of students to slip through the school system without learning math.

True story: My parents were very controlling. So much so, that even though I had a full scholarship for college (due to my writing skills) they insisted that I had to major in nursing, or get a job. Any other course of study was considered to be a waste of time, as far as they were concerned.

The problem was that I was just good enough at everything else to pass my classes despite the fact that I knew no math. I was, for example, the only student who actually managed to make a poisonous gas in chem lab (which was the point of the experiment).

I was no genius. It was simply that in the high school I had attended, the nuns taught us to begin with clean equipment. I washed everything before I began, so I had no trace elements in my beakers to throw off the experiment. It was not surprising that I was the only one to get the end product.

Anyhow, such oddities kept me with decent grades in the program and it reached the point that they were about to send us into clinicals.

It was at that point (end of 3rd year) that I became defiant and determined to drop out of the program whether my parents liked it or not.

I filed my application to leave the nursing college. And oddly, I was called into see the Dean.

She told me that although I didn't know it yet, deep down, I really wanted to be a nurse. I told her that if she sent me into clinicals with my complete lack of math skills, I would end up killing some patient by mistake.

She replied that my grades were higher than a lot of other students and they were not worried about it -- so I shouldn't be worried either.

I informed her that was because they were truly stupid and that I definitely wasn't. I had been poorly taught in math and I knew it -- and that sending me out into the world to administer medications to patients was really foolish.

We argued for hours. I finally got my way -- but it was the most absurd experience of my life. This woman simply refused to believe me when I told her I knew I was dangerously incompetent when it came to math and did not want to be responsible for calculating anything in regard to patient care.

Think about that. If people who were less capable in math than I was (at that point in my life) were willing to go out into the world and make life and death care decisions -- it's truly frightening.

I went into fine arts and felt the world was safe from my ignorance.

I don't think I would have made a good nurse for other reasons (tendency to get too emotionally attached to people). So I never regretted my decision to change majors.

--Debutante